


definitive gaze

by IrisParry



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Handcuffs, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-06-19
Packaged: 2018-07-16 01:16:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7246345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrisParry/pseuds/IrisParry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn't know what he expected. To come around to the press of Hux's fingers, his lips, share a shower before breakfast. To be shaken awake at dawn and lace his shoes hunched outside on the steps, in the rain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	definitive gaze

**Author's Note:**

> This fic's working title was "Kylo Is Gross, Feelings Are Gross." The actual title is a Magazine song. Thanks to [cosleia](http://cosleia.tumblr.com) for a read-through. See end notes for more on the bad etiquette if you need.

There’s light, but not enough to make moving seem urgent. There’s a gentle ache that makes a _little_ movement feel good, that burns nicely with a shift, a stretch. Cool air when the sheet pulls down. Somewhere, a slow whisper of fabric, light tapping steps on floorboards. The smell of sweat, faint sour tang of rubber, okay, and … coffee? Possibly coffee. Coffee would be nice.

Kylo rolls his face in the pillow. His mind is still unmoored, and he tries to hang on to the fuzzy contentment of his body. Things catch up to him anyway, dread that starts in his belly and works its way up to knock around erratically in his chest. His sudden stillness is likely greater confirmation that he’s awake than drowsy fidgeting, but it is not met with any greeting. Hux's bed is wide and warm, but, he confirms, cautiously stretching a foot over to the other side, he’s alone in it. He doesn't know what he expected. To come around to the press of Hux's fingers, his lips, share a shower before breakfast. To be shaken awake at dawn and lace his shoes hunched outside on the steps, in the rain.

Kylo draws a measured breath, counting in and out again. The mingled scent of them both comes with it, and he swallows down a fresh flutter of panic, an urge to get up and punch something. He pulls his lip between his teeth instead and bites, makes himself focus. He is where he is. He’s done what he’s done. Time to deal with it. Kylo cracks an eye open, the dark wood of the nightstand swimming into focus.

There's a tiny, bright red espresso cup sitting on it. He experiences several seconds of confused gratitude before it's snatched up: two fingers in the handle, pinky stuck out at an angle. White shirtsleeve, blink of silver at the cuff. Kylo imagines he hears a soft, wet, barely-perceptible noise, Hux's lips parting, his tongue darting out over them. Imagines his throat moving as he swallows. The cup clicks back down onto the coaster.

Hux moves out of Kylo's bleary field of vision, but still sounds close. Kylo digs his teeth in sharply one last time, then rolls onto his back and squints up at him. The curtains are closed behind the head of the bed but dim morning sun filters through, enough to light Hux up where he stands, back to Kylo while he searches through the open wardrobe.

The lights of the bar are dimmed with coloured glass shades, and beneath them Kylo always sees the deepest colours in Hux’s hair, flashes of vulpine reds and burnt oranges. Now it looks lighter, almost a rosy blonde in places. He’s slicked it back again, but he’d made a glorious mess of it last night, sweated it dark and loose. Astride Kylo, he'd spread a palm on his chest, rode him harder, pushed his other hand through his own hair and kept it there, clenching and unclenching a fist, eyes screwed shut and his face pressed into his bicep.

Hux threads a belt through the loops of perfectly pressed trousers, movements brisk and efficient, face impassive. Kylo thinks of assembling a rifle, of letting it flow through his hands almost automatically, the easy precision of familiarity.

Kylo watches Hux's fingers work and it's almost Pavlovian at this point. Hux's hands are at his belt, therefore Kylo's cock is stirring. He's never seen him putting it _on_ , but it's equally effective. There's something to be said for not disappearing into the night, then. He hadn't planned to stay; but then, it's not like he ever really plans to leave and still he does. He dresses in the dark and cradles cup after cup of cooling coffee in the all-night cafe at the end of Hux's street, in the back booth, heart stuttering like the tired neon sign in the window.

Hux has not shown particular investment in either eventuality. He watches Kylo watch him, expression unreadable, knots a dark red tie at his throat. The sharp collar covers a scar, pale as his skin and smooth to the touch, tapering away to nothing where the muscle of his shoulder rises. Kylo has never asked him how he got it, or what he gave in return. Hux keeps the restrained quality of an old black-and-white mystery, things the imagination can dream up all the more thrilling than full colour revelation. Kylo chases that hint of viciousness, some nights, braces his feet against the mattress, the footboard, drives into Hux hard enough to make him dig his fingers and his heels in, spit venom into Kylo's ear.

Kylo feels awake now, back in his body. He stretches out, mainly for Hux's benefit: crosses his wrists above his head, arches his back a little, exaggerates. He drags the covers lower with his feet, and a smile widens on Hux's face with each inch of skin Kylo reveals. Kylo has been far more forward with Hux before, to enthusiastic response, but he finds he’s still relieved at the approval. He’d been afraid he would lose this, somehow. The flight instinct is ebbing away under Hux’s attention until he can just let it feel good, lying here naked while Hux is fully dressed. Sometimes Hux's nudity feels like the facade, the severe suit his most natural self - the one Kylo goes home with time and time again, the one he wants to show himself to now. There’s a kind of honesty in the craft.

The moment hangs, their eyes hold. Hux adjusts his cuffs. No magical intuition passes between them to tell Kylo what he's thinking, what comes next. Hux's eyes are cold sea-green, sharp and beautiful, and Kylo doesn't look for anything else in them.

"You look a mess," Hux says, finally, casually, and he moves to sit at the edge of the bed, side-on to Kylo, turning his head to consider him.

"You made me a mess," Kylo replies, flexes a foot again. Hux lifts the sheet where it snags on Kylo's hardening cock, rather primly considering, pinches it between delicate fingers and folds it back.

"And my bed is a mess," Hux continues with more than a hint of reproach, as if Kylo hasn't spoken. Kylo doesn't know where he's going with this, but Hux makes it so easy to just - follow.

Hux's brow creases and he walks fingertips along Kylo's ribs, watches his chest rise and fall. "I suppose you thought," he muses, "that I might be terribly tempted by this little display."

Something hot and awkward churns in Kylo's belly, and if it's the thought of being found out or of being found wanting he can't tell.

"You're a mess," Hux tells him again, hand sweeping lower to Kylo's stomach, and the ache of those muscles is suddenly sweeter where they tense beneath Hux's touch. Hux's fingers stutter through what clumsy clean-up left behind and he turns them nail-point down, four lines of pressure paling and pinking across Kylo's skin. Kylo inhales sharply.

Hux rubs something dry and flaky to dust between his fingertips. "Disgusting."

Kylo flushes hotly at the sides of his neck, his ears. Kylo supposes he must actually be the man's _dirty little secret_ , though it's not like there's anything terribly furtive about what they're doing. Their lives just don't intersect in any other respects. It’s unexpectedly hot to really feel like it, though, naked and pouting for attention, filthy with dried sweat and come while Hux is clean and groomed. He clenches his ass a little to rock his hips and Hux drops his hand to Kylo's thigh with a sharp slap, pressing him back down into the mattress. Kylo twitches against it, but the second instinct for stillness snuffs the first for a fight.

"You like it," Hux observes. His jaw twitches and he grips tighter. "Of course you do. The man who doesn't even avail himself of the shower before he slinks out. I think you're disappointed I don't just screw you up and put you straight out into the street."

"Why don't you?" It's supposed to be a dare, but it comes out throaty and wrong. _Why don't you? What is it you want, if not that?_ There are things Kylo doesn't want to know; there are things he's dying to know, that Hux might fill his silence with.

Hux narrows his eyes. Kylo hardly breathes for a moment. Then Hux leans in and kisses him, firm and unhurried, his tie dragging along Kylo's bare skin. He grips Kylo's wrist - _big hands, slim wrists,_ Hux had said, one of the first times they met, reaching across the table in the bar, making it seem like a combination laden with possibilities. Hux braces himself on the mattress with his other hand, pushing Kylo's arm up and across.

The bedstead is the same dark, solid wood of the rest of the furniture, plain and unadorned, a row of rounded rails running the width of the frame. Kylo takes Hux’s cue and grabs one in each hand, arms spread and bent at the elbow. Hux smooths his hand down, admiring the tension of the muscle. He breaks the kiss, still so close his lips flit against Kylo's when he murmurs, "Very good." Kylo's eyes flutter with pleasure and he tries to press himself closer, lifts in a long, sinuous roll of his body, fitting their mouths together again.

Hux makes a vaguely chastening sound and sits up, frowning and brushing some invisible filth of Kylo's off his tie. His eyes rake down Kylo's body, calculating and predatory. Kylo waits, and though his heart patters and sweat prickles beneath his arms he can feel something in him unspooling, letting go. Hux turns a hand palm up and tugs his cuff to sit higher up his forearm. Keeping his clean shirt clear, he wraps his fingers loose around Kylo's cock, starts to work him slow but steady.

Hux watches him intensely, and under his scrutiny Kylo is conscious of every twitch of every muscle, of his cock filling out Hux's grip, of exactly how his body responds to Hux's touch. When Kylo is panting, thrusting shallowly, knuckles surely white on the rails above his head, Hux releases him - he seems to relish the gasp of frustration, smiles and pats Kylo's thigh soothingly before he wipes his palm on the sheet. He opens the drawer of the nightstand. Kylo doesn't know everything he keeps in there, but what he does know he really, really likes.

Hux kisses him again, messier this time, and Kylo hardly registers the clank of metal before it's cold against his wrist and he's groaning into the kiss, chasing it when Hux pulls away to secure the cuffs.

They're not toys, not flimsy joke shop material or leather designed to be kind. The dull steel is functional and solid, the chain between the two cuffs tough. Hux has put them on him once before, locked his hands behind his back and then put him on his knees, kept him off-balance and moved him with fists in his hair. Kylo wasn't sure if Hux was even asleep when he left that night, and in the cafe he'd spilled the metal sugar canister with his shaking hands. Sometimes, when they're spent and sprawled out and there's nothing more to do or say to one another, Hux will press his knuckles light to Kylo's side, his shoulder, the back of his thigh, with something that might be tenderness. Kylo couldn't have taken it, not then.

Hux pushes his fingers under the metal, testing the tightness, rubbing over Kylo's racing pulse. When he's satisfied he coaxes Kylo's fingers off the rail - Kylo obeys in a second - and claps the other cuff onto it. He goes back into the drawer and secures Kylo's other hand with a second pair.

Kylo is dizzy with want by the time Hux sits back to admire his work. He’d liked displaying himself for Hux, wouldn’t keep coming here if he didn’t like Hux’s instructions, his pushiness, but this is - Kylo is strong, still keeps himself in condition, but it would be tough to break himself free. If he wanted to. He doesn’t want to. He’s unspeakably aroused, his cock hot and sticky against his belly, thighs squeezing together almost of their own accord. Hux could do anything to him. Hux could watch him squirm and pant for hours; make himself more coffee and sip at it, sit in the chair across the room while Kylo waits. Answer emails at his fucking MacBook, to colleagues with no idea he has Kylo chained up for his convenience.

Kylo shudders and the cuffs rattle. He tugs lightly at them, pulling the chains taut, nowhere near enough to test them, just to feel it. Hux looks affected for the first time this morning, his nostrils flaring as he presses his lips together thoughtfully. Kylo can't tell if he's hard.

"Don't - " Kylo swallows, "Don't you have to work?" He doesn’t know what he’s saying. He might be crowing, having proven a fine distraction after all: he might want to hear that Hux dressed himself so carefully just to torment Kylo in the house all day.

"I do," Hux replies, raising an eyebrow. His eyes flit down Kylo's body again, and he draws the back of two fingers delicately up Kylo's cock. He brings them briefly to his nose, quirks a little smile that seems only for himself. Kylo melts a little further into the bed, Hux’s pleasure, even in that light touch, rushing through him like a drug.

“I have several appointments this morning," Hux continues, posture straightening. Then he stands, retrieving his suit’s jacket from the wardrobe and folding it carefully over his arm. "I should be back at lunch, around 1:30."

Kylo blurts out a laugh. “Wait, what?”

Hux picks up the red espresso cup and downs the last of the coffee, grimacing slightly as if it’s gone cold. “1:30,” he repeats, setting it down on the side again. And with that he turns on an elegant heel and walks out of the bedroom.

Kylo is aware of nothing but the thudding of his heart for a long moment.

Then the panic blooms in his stomach again. He can't be - 1:30? He scans the room, but there isn't even a fucking - as he goes to sit up, the cuffs pull him short. “What time is it _now_?!” he yells.

Beyond the bedroom there is a thump, a click, soft but unmistakable. The front door to Hux's house. Kylo knows it well enough by now.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Bad BDSM etiquette: Hux handcuffs Kylo without any discussion or negotiation on the matter before or during, though Kylo consents to it and is definitely enjoying it. Hux leaves the house while Kylo is still restrained, which you should NEVER EVER DO, DEAR GOD. There's reference to a previous time when Kylo has been restrained and it seems there was pretty much no aftercare. Also, cuffs made of unprotected metal are probably a terrible idea.
> 
> Update 15/01/17: yes, I deleted chapter 2. I struggled with it because I think I was trying too hard to please, and ended up writing something I didn't really want to write in a way I didn't want to write it. I wasn't happy with it and it knocked my confidence, and for a while I couldn't look at this fic at all. I thought about continuing but the ‘hangover’ from that experience was just a bit too much: I always liked this as an ending, so I’m going to leave it there. I would never rule out coming back to something if I feel the inspiration, but don’t expect anything further.


End file.
